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| Character concept art for the male Avatar |
Introduction:
In my previous blog entry, I talked about embarking on the process of making an educational game about Permaculture and Global Warming. In this blog entry I hope to give a kind of update of what I have so far(yes I was serious about making the game). I hope to encourage conversation and feedback, and if nothing else, to organize my thoughts while writing this. If you want to know the basic premise of the game then check out my previous blog post here: http://keeganblazeywrittenworks.blogspot.com/2018/07/creative-journal-entry-1-game-of-life.html
I am a lover of strategy games and I have noticed how they have influenced my approach to Permaculture Design. I am also a lover of aesthetics and visually appealing stories and games. I feel that these three passions of mine can be combined into something beautiful and elegant, a game that can teach sustainability and systems thinking in a fun way. I am aiming to reach the kind of simple yet complex game play of chess or Chinese Go. I want to make Lego for people to make sustainable and creative systems.
I've drawn on games that I have played that allow people to use the elements of the game in unexpected ways and apply the unique creativity of the human mind to game play problems. Hopefully this game will allow problem solving in areas such as ethical decision making, ecosystem design and resource management instead of the usual warlike behavior of mainstream games. Of course these are the things I am reaching for, but I am by no means anywhere near them yet. It also may be that these dreams of mine are only realized in a nearer than expected future where we are using VR and augmented reality to create Permaculture designs. I am a gamer, and I know first hand how quickly gamers will learn to be the best at a game for the pure satisfaction of outsmarting their enemies. So why not try and apply all that fervor to something more beneficial?
My goal is to finish a presentable version of this game by March this year. At the moment it's very rough and I am using coins and paper cut outs for cards. I hope to finish most of the artwork and designing so that it can be a playable game by March 2019. Below is a very rough sketch of what the game is now.
GOAL of the Game(as a player).
Your
goal is to survive for four years. So far, the key to survival is
having a large community. This means having a lot of food production and
many contingencies for disasters. I have constructed the weather card
system to simulate a randomized weather pattern according to seasons. During my own play tests I have encountered many interesting situations that have led to my death and I have actually learned quite a lot about the most logical progression to creating a sustainable system for survival. Below I explain the details of the game mechanics.
How the Game works:
1. You start off as a player on a piece of land, you have a house and a garden that you can place immediately. The map is divided into tiles, each tile has a resource on it and various characteristics. For example, it may have a stream running through it and be high land, midland or lowland. You consume water and food each turn for survival, so you must water your garden and start developing water supplies and food production systems to survive. Each player has 100 Health points, if they go to zero, then the game is lost.
I have detailed descriptions of every card and element in the game, all the information and specific rules will be printed on the cards themselves. So this will be a board game with about 5 different card packs and different counters for resources and players on the board. At the moment it is only one player while I get the resources and weather system balanced, then I will add the potential for cooperation on the same land or neighboring lands joined together. These are all decisions I hope to make in light of feedback and outside input. In the future I may introduce a competitive element, but at the moment I want it to be about cooperation.
Below is a quick digital mock up of what the map might look like. The H, M, and L stand for Highland, Midland and Lowland
2. Each turn is a season in the year and you must draw a weather card from each season's pack. Each season weather cards are stacked with fun things like Rain, Sun, wind, pests diseases and various boons. There is more rain and wind in winter for example and more drought in summer. There are also different modifiers that happen during spring, winter or autumn, for example you get more food per food system in autumn due to harvest time, and you get less food in winter and more water per water system. I hope that this can teach people about the seasons and how to catch and store energy at the right times. Originally there were 3 turns per season to simulate months, but the game ended up being very long.
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| Play testing using mock ups and coins as counters |
3. Each Turn You must draw an Adventure Card. These are stacked with outside entities that will enter into your property(or claimed land). New community members such as engineers, plumbers or gardeners will come to join you. Increasing your upkeep but allowing you to maintain more for less action points. Wild animals that can be tamed, and also raiders from scavenging gangs can come and maraud your land. These were originally scattered in the weather card system, but once I eliminated the 3 turns per season, it became necessary to make them a separate pack in order to assure that the player gets community members and animals.
4. The player has 4 action points per turn. Some actions you can do are:
Move. Build, Repair, Harvest, Water.
It takes one action point to do any of these things. Which means that it matters where you place your structures, especially if you need to water them each turn. Therefore supplying each system with water will free you up to build and do other necessary things.
At the moment the balance of resources means that there is an excess of food. So one of the mechanics is that the player can exchange 10 food for an extra movement. This means that if you have the resources you could build more than one thing in a turn , at a cost though, and I found out the hard way that spending food reserves is a bad idea unless you have a real excess.
Another important factor is that your player can take damage from exposure during harsh weather events(from cards drawn during each season). So if you are outside your house during the autumn turn, then you draw the winter weather card and it turns out to be a blizzard, then you will experience damage and penalties for another two turns based on that decision. This is not a game for children, and the current complexity of the game is worrying me quite a bit.
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| Close up of my play testing area/table |
5. Structures: The player can place any structures at any time during their turn. They must be in the tile that they want to build. Having an energy source in that area will allow the building to be placed without using an action point due to the use of powertools.
The buildings are all the basic structures needed for a sustainable small holding. For example, Garden, Polytunnel, solar panels, tanks and pipelines, electrical cables, ram pumps and electronic pumps etc. Tree systems, fencing structures and storage structures are also a possibility, but I have left most of these out due to the complexity. Maybe in an advanced version of the game I can increase the complexity and add root cellars and woodstores and even reed bed systems for toilets etc. At the moment the focus is on water management and woodland management, as these two resources deplete fairly quickly in the game.
Below is a close up of a game in progress, which is in the second year. In this scenario I had two pipelines which were upstream from my structures, they were supplying a tank which overflowed to supply the poly-tunnel downstream. Later in the game, I lost this pipe due to a weather disaster and I was left with a food shortage, thirsty animals and an un-watered poly tunnel during a summer drought. This is why there are two pipelines and two tanks. I was able to keep some food production going and still water the polytunnel using the tank in the garden system. Contingencies contingencies!
6. Resources: Water, wood, Energy, Scrap, Food. The player can acquire all these resources from the tiles on the board, though they are finite. There is a limit on how much a player can harvest from each system per turn and the stream will go dry during drought and other events like blizzards etc. This will force players to keep storage of water during dry periods and to prepare for disasters such as floods and wild fires.
5. Every Year at the beginning of Spring you must draw a STORY CARD:
I realized after playing the game a few times that it was becoming more of an accounting exercise than it was a fun engaging game. The story aspect is an attempt to bring some fun into the game a provide a purpose for the player to survive.
I have only made four story cards so far, and the idea is to make as many as possible, this will make a kind of scaling difficulty and allow good players to see how far they can get.
So
far, the first year is a reward for surviving. The second year is a
light raid from neighboring scavengers. The third year is a type of
scavenging kingdom that takes notice of your activities and demands
tribute. The fourth year is the military from the nearest city that
tries to extort you for food production.
Another idea is a kind of campaign(for the digital version) which will also serve as a systematic way of teaching someone PDC skills using the game as a story driven teaching exercise. So this pic is the beginnings of that idea:
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| Story board of the storyline, perhaps for an intro to a digital game |
CONCLUSION
So if you have read all this, I thank you, and I hope that you can leave a comment with some feedback on the game idea so far. I am developing a digital version too, using Unity Developer and my Art skills to make the assets. This is a slow process as I also have two jobs. I hope to update this blog at least once a month. If this game idea is well received and if I can develop it into something that is worth pursuing, I hope to secure funding and make it a full time project. I feel that the best way to do something properly is to do it full time, however I have to make money to survive, so currently I spend 1 hour a day developing this idea.
What I've Learned so Far:
1. Game mechanics are hard to develop and even harder to balance.
2. Creating something fun and complex is very hard to do. The complexity of the game is a big problem at the moment, even I struggle to play it(which is a bad sign).
3. Whats fun for me might not be fun for others!
Things I am looking for:
1. anybody with Unity game making and coding experience, as well as permaculture design experience. My coding skills are very basic and amateurish, so it would be great to collaborate with a coder.
2. Play testers: people willing to play this crazy game and give me feedback!
3. Funding!! anybody or any organization, or any funding plan that I haven't considered. I've looked into Patreon and various other platforms so far.
4. Any similar games that I can look at for reference. I have used games like: FTL, Rimworld, Agricola, NorthGard, Company of Heroes, Magic the Gathering, Space Engineers. These are all resource management, strategy, sandbox or roguelike games that I admire for various reasons.
5. Artists! I need artists to help me design all the cards, boards, counters and hopefully one day Packaging!
Things I have already:
1. A burning desire to make a positive difference with my skills.
2. Basic Unity coding and game engine experience
3. Very basic 3d Blender experience.
4. Fairly intermediate to advanced Permaculture Design and Gardening experience
5. A passion for games, sci fi, sustainability, stories and art.
6.Digital Art, Fine Art, and concept art skills for games(I work as a freelance Digital Artist).
Check out the links to my work on the top right of this blog, here is my latest illustration:
